Is all my stuff obsolete?

In my lifetime, which seems to be getting longer all the time, I have amassed a lot of stuff. In the bottom of my wardrobe there are stacks of old magazines. There's a lot of them. About fifteen years worth of a games magazine that I was subscribed to. There is no good reason for me to still have them. The magazine was eventually closed down, like all magazines will be, because who wants to own a pile of paper when you can get everything on the internet? And that pretty much goes for a lot of my other stuff. There didn't used to be a problem with it. Now somebody could easily call it clutter. Why have all this physical media when it could be transferred to a computer?

Are racks of CDs now plastic irrelevancies when they can be contained invisibly in a silver box? In fact, CDs are easy to get rid of. The discs are only a storage medium for data files. It's the music that counts, and that can be stored on a computer. Transfer them over. Get rid of them. Yes. But what if I don't want an album on iTunes, but would still like to keep it? Okay, I'll keep a few. Not many, though, right? After all, some new computers don't even come with optical drives, because why would you even need one, like some loser stuck in 2005? Technology is marching forward, determined to leave physical media in the past, and if I'm not on board then I'm just not doing it right. The last few years have been a tipping point. Some people have ruthlessly cleared their shelves, and some, like me, haven't really bothered.

I might be changing my mind. For instance, I've been slowly going off the idea of owning films. It might seem like a good idea, but in reality I'll watch a DVD once then put it on a shelf forever and never touch it again. And what's the point in that? I used to watch all the commentaries and little extras. They just seem like a novelty now. So I should get rid of the DVDs. Well, maybe. Mostly. Everyone needs a few favourites to watch sometimes, and I'm not convinced there's a proper digital alternative. A streaming service like Netflix will only ever have some things, and I like the idea of owning a collection. It's possible to download films to iTunes and connect them to a television, but who really does that? And when it comes to books, I still choose to be stubborn, even though I could make the same arguments: paper is just a material for displaying words, words that could be on a screen, and I only ever read these things once. The difference, though, is that unlike data on a disc, books are real objects. They are nice to own. They are nice to have. The only time I see the point in e-books is when I'm trying to clear out old books, which isn't that often anyway. Maybe I would read more without wondering where I was going to fit each new book onto a shelf. Maybe I wouldn't.

There's a brutal and kind of appealing way to approach all this. I've read articles that say we should throw everything we're not using away and live in rooms of pared down minimalistic beauty. Just clear everything out, the articles say, get rid of anything that is clogging up your air space and keep the essential things. I imagine, though, that this is more fun to think about than it is to actually do. Tidy is good. I like tidy. Actually, that's not true. I like tidying. That's the satisfying part. A tidy room is boring. There's nothing to tidy. Even writing about tidying is fun. Not going to watch that film again? Throw it out the window. Why do I have these old books? Get rid of them. Make space. Start fresh. Sounds good. Sweeping away all these physical objects might be fun, like I was lessening some imagined burden, but I suspect there isn't much difference between an almost empty room and the lair of a psychopath. Because what would I have if I threw everything out, dumped all my films, pushed all my books onto some little device? A lot of empty shelves is what I would have.

Using books as decoration seems like a hollow argument, but the media we surround ourselves with is part of our identity. Lining a shelf with certain books is saying 'this is what I like, these are my favourites'. There are some objects that relate to my history. Like my vast collection of Nintendo games that I could never part with, even though they take up all that space. And the stacks of magazines that I believe have some connection to the time I read them. I will never really look at them again, I know that, but I do need to keep some stuff from the past. This is where I disagree with the constantly evolving idea of newness, with all the yearly updates of slim computers to more efficiently hide and organise our things. Yes, CDs and DVDs are on their way out, but we need to keep some real objects from the past, not virtual versions of them. Tidy is good, in moderation. Prune the DVD collection. Donate old books. Clear CD racks. The rest can stay. Some of my stuff is obsolete, but I'll keep it anyway.

Earthbound is the game I missed twenty years ago

In 1994 Nintendo released a game called Earthbound on the SNES. At least, they released it in most parts of the world. It didn't come out in Europe until this year, possibly because they forgot about it. So I hadn't played it until now. I could have downloaded it from some dodgy website, but I like to be nice and legal, and I didn't really care that much. But it's a classic, both in the sense of it being really good and quite old. It's an adventure, about a boy leaving home to fight aliens with his friends. It's funny, and inventive, and charming, and reminded me how special games can be.

Even by the standards of 1994, this is not a very good looking game. But at the same time it is a very good looking game, because sometimes all you need is a few pixels in the right place. And it's also just a basic RPG, even though that makes it constantly compelling. The thing that makes this game special is that, more than anything else I've played recently, there's a sense of adventure. At the start, a boy wakes up in his bedroom, says goodbye to his family, and goes out to save the world. He wanders around the town, eating burgers and fighting snakes. He goes to the next town, saves a friend from a brainwashed cult, then goes to the next town to fight zombies. Soon you're on a different continent altogether. There's a long way to walk, and it's always strangely brilliant. It's funny, and I don't just mean there's a few jokes. The entire game is a surreal comedy, both in the script and the way it plays around with gaming conventions. This was back in the days when games were made by a few people, and this is all the vision of one Japanese designer, Shigesato Itoi (and translated to English by one guy). It's a very personal game - to the people who made it, and to the people who played it.

I didn't realise how wrapped up I was in all this until I was standing in a desert and a monkey taught me how to teleport. Suddenly, after plodding around the whole world, I could warp to wherever I wanted. I didn't go straight for some item shop or old dungeon. The first thing I did was teleport home. There was no reason, even in the story, for me to go back to the house where I started, but that's what I felt I needed to do.When I got there my mother was watching television, and said she was proud of me for saving the world. My point is that with simple graphics and brilliant writing, this game from twenty years ago made me care. It's a shame I didn't play it back then, because good game + time = nostalgia. I know it would be something I'd look back on as being part of my childhood, as many other people do. More than any other media, games are what I remember from that long ago. The best ones can take you back to another time, even by just hearing the soundtrack. They are different worlds that never change. Parts of your childhood that you can always go back to. To a lot of people, Earthbound is that special. To me, twenty years late, it's just a very good game.

Music from before

Some music sounds like a long time ago. There might be bands or film soundtracks that sound like your childhood. It's not like that for me. There's only one thing that was the soundtrack to my twentieth century. And films have got nothing on this.

For when you're swimming around calm waters with a giant eel
You can't go swimming without this. You'll feel a lot more relaxed, and you'll be able to hold your breath for longer. If you feel like you're about to drown, look for air bubbles or coins. Then when you're jumping around a massive castle, wondering what to do next, you'll realise there's a slide in the attic.

For when you're standing in a field feeling epic
Listen to this. It works better if you've got a sword and a shield. When you're feeling epic enough, walk into a forest to look for money in the bushes. If you accidentally open up an ancient underground labyrinth, don't go in without a few bottled fairies. If you make it back to your village, go into your friends' houses to break their pots and steal their money. Then go back out at night.

For when you're crawling through ventilation shafts
The only place they lead is the toilets. Make your way through the building, killing no more than two scientists. Shoot everyone on a train. Shoot everyone on a boat. Get thrown in jail. Then climb an electricity pylon for the final showdown with your nemesis.